Date: January 31, 2019
Source: Hokkaido University
A look at
the brains of an endangered spiny rat off the coast of Japan by University of
Missouri (MU) Bond Life Sciences Center scientist Cheryl Rosenfeld could
illuminate the subtle genetic influences that stimulate a mammal's cells to
develop as male versus female in the absence of a Y chromosome.
The root of
the answer is in the chromosomes of this particular mammal. Males of the Amami
spiny rat (Tokudaia osimensis) are
not like most therian mammals -- a name used to group animals that give live
birth including placental mammals and marsupials. Unlike in most mammals, these
males have no Y chromosome, which has been shed over eons of evolution. And
they only have one X chromosome.
"I'd
been interested in these rats for many years now, and it's unclear how sexual
differentiation of the gonads and brain occur in this species since both males
and females have a single X chromosome," said Cheryl Rosenfeld, lead
author on the study and an MU researcher.
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